Sam Altman Testifies in Elon Musk Lawsuit Against OpenAI
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a court on Tuesday that Elon Musk was obsessed with controlling the organization and twice tried to kill it. Altman testified after two weeks of trial in which Musk is suing OpenAI. Musk told the court he does not lose his temper.
bbc.co.ukSam Altman testified on Tuesday in a trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI that Elon Musk was obsessed with trying to control the artificial intelligence company and wanted long-term control of it. Altman said after OpenAI’s Dota 2 win, discussions for a for-profit arm started in earnest.
He testified that Elon Musk felt very strongly that if OpenAI formed a for-profit he needed to have total control over it initially.
Altman added that Elon Musk only trusted himself to make non-obvious decisions that were going to turn out to be correct. The OpenAI CEO testified that he was uncomfortable with Elon Musk’s insistence on control because OpenAI existed so no one person would control AGI.
When he asked Elon Musk about succession plans for OpenAI, Musk replied that in the event of his death control should pass to his children.
Sam Altman sent a 2017 email to Shivon Zilis stating he was worried about control and that no one person should have control of the world’s first AGI. Altman testified that he read a vague, lightweight threat in texts from Sam Teller indicating Musk would build AI inside Tesla with or without Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever.
Sam Teller sent texts to Shivon Zilis at 12:40 AM on February 4th, 2018 stating he didn’t love OpenAI continuing without Elon and would rather disable it by recruiting the leaders.
Elon Musk stopped his quarterly donations to OpenAI. After that, OpenAI was operating on a shoestring with an extremely short runway of cash. OpenAI had other donors, none of whom have sued it or joined Musk’s suit.
Alameda Research, owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, was a donor to OpenAI. Elon Musk resigned from the OpenAI board. Altman testified that Elon Musk had demotivated some of OpenAI’s key researchers and done huge damage for a long time to the culture of the organization.
He testified that Musk tried to kill OpenAI twice. “We created, through a ton of hard work, this extremely large charity, and I agree you can’t steal it,” Altman said. “Mr. Musk did try to kill it, I guess.
Sam Altman kept Elon Musk apprised of what was going on with setting up OpenAI’s for-profit arm, either directly or through Zilis or Teller. At no point did Elon Musk object to the for-profit plans during the time Altman kept him apprised. Elon Musk told the court under oath that he doesn’t lose his temper.
Shivon Zilis testified under oath that she didn’t know Musk was starting xAI. Greg Brockman testified under oath that he was all about the mission. Steven Molo spent more than 10 minutes on cross-examination telling Sam Altman that various people had called him a liar, including Sutskever, Mira Murati, Toner, McCauley, Daniela and Dario Amodei, employees at Altman’s first startup Loopt, a New Yorker article, and a book called The Optimist.
Sam Altman testified on May 12, 2026 that he wasn’t paying close attention to testimony in the trial. The trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI had been underway for two weeks before Sam Altman testified. The article reporting these facts was published on May 12, 2026 at 11:23 PM UTC.
Transparency
Rewrite heavily inherits Musk-hostile valence skew and loaded language from sources, repeatedly framing him as obsessed, controlling, and destructive while presenting Altman's testimony as neutral fact.
Valence skew: Systematic negative verbs and adjectives applied only to Musk
The same testimony and documents could be read as Altman and OpenAI betraying founding nonprofit principles by pursuing massive for-profit control and Microsoft billions while sidelining Musk’s original safety-focused vision.
3 independent outlets report the same core facts. This score blends how many outlets corroborate, their editorial tier, and how closely their facts agree — it measures corroboration, not proof.
Sources framed at 65; our rewrite scored 68 — in line with the sources.
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